Cons:

A few nights ago, I ran into pro gamer Jonathan "fatal1ty" Wendell at a DirecTV gaming event near Disneyland. At the time, I was cleaning up in a Guitar Hero competition, and Wendell, a professed GH fan who'd seen me win other tournaments (my Guitar Hero proficiency has been well documented at GameSpy), asked for some pointers while simultaneously fielding autograph requests. Driving home later that night, I found myself wondering: what bizarro world have I entered where one of the world's top professional gamers is seeking me out for tips?

Such is the kind of madness inspired by the Guitar Hero series, which today debuts on the Xbox 360 in the form of a new-and-improved Guitar Hero II. With 10 new songs, online leaderboards, hi-def graphics, a full compliment of Achievements and the promise of downloadable songs coming in the next few weeks, it's by far superior to the PS2 version that was already a classic in its own right, marred only by a new X-Plorer guitar controller that's a notch below its PS2 cousins.

Encore Performance

Since we've covered this ground before, we'll keep the setup short: Guitar Hero II is a rhythm game that simulates -- what else? -- the act of playing a guitar. Bundled with a special guitar controller, songs are broken down into sequences of notes, and you rack up points by pressing the guitar's strum and fret buttons in time with the music. On the Easy and Medium skill levels, you only need to manage three or four buttons, but by the time you get to Hard or Expert, you're playing intricate patterns and chords that will have your fingers flying all over the fret buttons.

The main single-player "campaign" consists of 48 rock-oriented tracks, up from 40 in the PS2 version. The new songs are a pretty strong bunch, including Deep Purple's "Hush," Rick Derringer's "Rock & Roll Hootchie Koo," Alice Cooper's "Billion Dollar Babies" and the much-requested appearance of Iron Maiden with "The Trooper." Almost all the songs are solid cover versions of the originals, but a few are original "master tracks," like the Toadies' "Possum Kingdom" and My Chemical Romance's "Dead!"

Guitar Hero II also supports multiplayer if you pick up a second guitar controller. There's the back-and-forth Face-Off mode from the first game; the newer Pro-Tourney mode, where both guitarists play the complete track side-by-side; and the co-op mode, where one person plays a lead track and the other plays rhythm or bass. The biggest disappointment is that there's no support for online play, which theoretically could still happen at some point down the road, but for now is nowhere on the horizon.

The organization of the songs within the eight tiers has been juggled a bit from the PS2 version. Thanks to the new songs, there are now 6 songs in each tier instead of 5, and songs have been shifted around to better reflect their difficulty. "Heart-Shaped Box," arguably the easiest song in the game, now sits in the first tier, while Spinal Tap's "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" has been moved back to the second set encore. For the most part, these changes don't have much impact on the game, but do a better job of reflecting the overall difficulty of each tune.

Getting gold stars for 100% on a song can be addictive.

Two new bonus songs from independent artists have also been added to the game: Ounce of Self's "Drink Up" and Noble Rot's "Kicked To The Curb," a fast-paced rocker that's instantly become one of my favorite songs to play. But what we're really waiting for is the introduction of downloadable songs via Xbox Live Marketplace. No songs are available yet and aren't expected for at least a week or two, but once songs from the original Guitar Hero start becoming available alongside all-new songs on a regular basis, this will likely be the feature that makes the Xbox 360 version the definitive one.

Visually, it's amazing how much sharper the Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero II looks when compared to the PS2's. Granted, the background antics of Pandora and the Grim Ripper don't have much impact on the gameplay, but it's impossible to mistake the 360 version for the PS2, with crisper models, high-res result screens and no slowdowns whatsoever.